I wander into the first room of Descriptive Acts, on SFMOMA’s fourth floor. To my left sits a twentysomething girl in front of a laptop at a table, typing continuously. To my right, a rectangular screen is projected, in which the girl’s typed words run from left to right. Together, these two components constitute Instant Narrative, a p... More

If I stand facing the mirror holding Bob Dylan’s self-portrait over my own face, do I not, in a sense, become him? If this is how Bob Dylan painted himself, then through this gesture am I not more like him than if I merely sang one of his songs out loud?

At some point as I recite his words and feelings, would our identities merge into one? I... More

In conjunction with Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards, we’ve restyled our weekly in-gallery talks with a superb lineup of past SECA Art awardees. Each Thursday at 6:30 p.m. an artist talks about something on view. Last week, Maria Porges (1992 SECA Art Award) talked about Janine Antoni and her sculpture Lick and Lather:

In 1974 the San Francisco Museum of Art accepted an unusual exhibition proposal from Bay Area–based artists Robert Moon and Gage Taylor: along with artist friends Robert Fried, Gerald Gooch, Bill Martin, and Richard Lowenberg, Moon and Taylor would take a month-long expedition to Baja, Mexico, covering 2,500 miles in two vans and a pickup truck. ... More

Last month, I convinced a friend to come with me to an exhibition, Baldessari Class Assignments (Optional), at California College of the Arts’ Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art. Before I had a chance to visually make sense of anything in the exhibition I was greeted by an overpowering sweet smell of vanilla and pastry. The source ... More

On view in San Francisco for just a few more days are two major photography exhibitions: Ralph Eugene Meatyard at the de Young and Francesca Woodman at SFMOMA. On January 26th, Julian Cox, Founding Curator of Photography for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Chief Curator at the de Young, and Corey Keller, Associate Curator of Photography at SFMOMA, talked to each other via G-chat, and discussed the two artists, their work, and their place in the history of photography.

In conjunction with Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards, we’ve restyled our weekly in-gallery talks with a superb lineup of past SECA Art awardees. Each Thursday at 6:30 p.m. an artist talks about something on view. Last week, Kathryn VanDyke (2000 SECA Art Award) talked about Agnes Martin and her painting Falling Blue:

A couple of weeks ago on SFMOMA’s Facebook page, I put out an invitation for folks to take their relationship with art to a whole new level: by professing their feelings in the form of a love letter. If you’ve ever written a real love letter to somebody, then you know all about th... More

Consider the murder last year of Monday, the 5-year-old swan who lived in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts, killed in what evidence suggests was a party — feathers found among empty beer cans and trash.

I met Michael Horse at Gathering Tribes, the gallery/cultural center he and his wife, Pennie Opal Plant, operate on Solano Avenue in Albany. The name of the establishment might describe the man himself. Horse embodies contemporary intertribal culture. He tells me that Yaqui, Mescalero Apache, and Zuni blood runs in his veins, along with a drop or two of Hispanic and European. Born in Arizona, he moved to Los Angeles, “the biggest urban Indian community in the U.S.,” when he was ten. There, Navajo, Cheyenne, and Sioux families surrounded ... More

Lending art to an exhibit is a complex experience. It makes you feel like an insider, like you’re special, like you’re part of the show, even though you know that isn’t accurate. It isn’t you, but this object you somehow acquired that the spotlight shines on. When you lend a piece to an exhibit, the work seems to take on a life of its own. It doesn’t need you. It’s happy hanging or sitting in this new space bathed in perfect lighting and tended by professionals who really understand its needs. When you lend an artwork to an exhibit ... More

When I saw this sculpture, crafted out of handmade paper, hanging in an alcove at California College of the Arts a few years ago, it stopped me in my tracks. The piece, with its multiple formal, material, and conceptual references to cycles, exemplifies, for me, what a teacher of mine once described as “the peculiar poignancy of aesthetic ... More

Though I first encountered Ana Mendieta and Francesca Woodman when I was barely 20, few artists since have made as strong an emotional and physical impact on me. I suppose one could write this off as the romantic over-identification of a young woman wrapped up in her own artistic attempts to express a female voice that would resist silencing. Their deaths bracketed my college years — Woodman committed suicide the year I started at Brown, while Mendieta died in a fall from a window (pushed, as I and many others believe, by her husb... More

As I made my way through the pantheon of exhibitions on display for L.A.’s current citywide retrospective Pacific Standard Time (PST), which celebrates the city’s fertile postwar period of art production, I couldn’t help but ponder: what of today’s many visionary young L.A. artists? What does all this history mean to them? Given the fifty-f... More

The enormous conceptual art project also known as Occupy Wall Street is in the news again, and this time it’s all about Oakland. Last week 409 people were arrested during confrontations with police. But in a march of 500 protesters that means almost everyone was arrested. And it’s weird because around the country, even in New York, where I am, the protests have all been nonviolent. So maybe it’s worth asking: Why is Oakland so different? Why are these kids throwing things at police when they know they might end up in jail? Mor... More

I figured I’d start out with a post that lets you know what you’re in for. So I’m endorsing the Republican candidate for president. Whichever of the two front runners it turns out to be. Probably Romney, but either one is good for the art world.

Wait, you’re probably thinking, most of the people I know in the art world are progressive and vote Democratic. A San Francisco artist, Matt Gonzalez, earned the VP spot on the Green ticket in 2008, after all. So what are you implying? That people in the art world don’t kno... More

Jeff Chang and Favianna Rodriguez are artist-organizers and the initiators of Culture Strike, an ongoing project that began in 2010 as a protest of Arizona’s SB 1070 law. Culture Strike aims to raise consciousness about immigration issues among artists. For the past two years, delegations of artists traveled to the US/Mexico border to learn first-hand about the struggles for migrant justice through witnessing legal procedures, meeting with grassroots organizers and visiting physical sites along the border. The hope is that the artists wil... More

In conjunction with Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards, we’ve restyled our weekly in-gallery talks with a superb lineup of past SECA Art awardees. Each Thursday at 6:30pm an artist talks about something on view. Last week, sculptor David Best (1977 SECA Art Award) talked about Joan Brown, and her painting Noel in the Kitchen:

David Best on Joan Brown’s Noel in the Kitchen, and in conversation with the audience.